Psychol Assess Research Articles

Do you 'like' problems? The linkage between college students' interactions with alcohol-related content on social media and their alcohol-related problems.

Alcohol-related content (ARC) on social media and drinking motives impact college students' drinking. Most studies have examined peer-generated ARC on drinking outcomes but have yet to extend this relationship to other sources of influence. The current study explores the link between drinking motives, alcohol company ARC, celebrity ARC, and alcohol-related problems among college students. Students (N = 454) from two US universities completed a cross-sectional online survey assessing demographics; drinking motives (Drinking Motives Questionnaire-Revised; Cooper, Psychol Assess. 1994;6:117-28); following/awareness of alcohol company ARC; engagement with celebrity ARC; peak drinks (most drinks consumed on one occasion); and alcohol-related problems (e.g., passed out). Greater celebrity ARC was linked to coping, enhancement, and conformity motives, and peak drinks. Frequent engagement with celebrity ARC was associated with higher problems. Positive indirect effects were observed from celebrity ARC to problems through coping and conformity motives, and peak drinks. After having adjusted for the influence of celebrity ARC, no significant pathways were found between alcohol company ARC and any of the drinking motives, peak drinks or problems, nor were there any indirect effects between alcohol company ARC and problems. Results revealed that a possible explanation for why students who engaged with celebrity ARC experience problems was due to coping and conformity motives as well as peak drinks. Interventions targeting alcohol cognitions might assess engagement with and exposure to different sources of ARC given their potential to influence problems.

Examining the Association Between Digital Stress Components and Psychological Wellbeing: A Meta-Analysis.

Extant research suggests that digital stress (DS) and its various components (Hall et al. in Psychol Assess 33(3):230-242, 2021) may mediate the association between social media use and psychosocial distress among adolescents and young adults. Yet no systematic review and meta-analysis has been conducted to examine the direct associations among DS components (i.e., approval anxiety, availability stress, fear of missing out [FOMO], connection overload, and online vigilance) and psychological outcomes. Thus, we aimed to comprehensively synthesize and quantify the association between these five DS components and psychosocial distress, and to examine whether these associations were statistically different from one another. Our search of PubMed, PsycINFO, and Communication and Mass Media Complete yielded a wide range of article abstracts across the five DS components. After reviewing inclusion and exclusion criteria, 7, 73, 60, 19, and 16 studies were included for availability stress, approval anxiety, FOMO, connection overload, and online vigilance, respectively. The results suggested that all five digital stress components had significant medium association with psychosocial distress (r = .26 to .34; p < .001). Age and sex did not significantly moderate the association between most digital stress components and psychosocial distress. However, age moderated the association between connection overload and psychosocial distress. Our findings further suggested no statistical differences among the associations between the five digital stress components and psychosocial distress. Notwithstanding its limitations, our outcomes help integrate the disparate effect sizes in the literature, indicate the strength of associations, and suggest directions for clinical intervention and future research.

Measuring Adolescents’ Well-Being in Schools: The Adaptation and Translation of the EPOCH Measure of Adolescent Well-Being—A Validation Study

This paper addresses a validation study focusing on the process of adapting the EPOCH measure of adolescent well-being (Kern et al. in Psychol Assess 28(5):586–597. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000201, 2016) to the school context and translating it into German—resulting in the EPOCH-School model (EPOCH-S) with the corresponding measure EPOCH-G-S (EPOCH-German-School). As schools represent an important context for promoting well-being, while at the same time, favorable effects of school-related well-being for adolescent development can be expected, research on school-related well-being is of utmost interest. To provide schools with the information they actually need to promote their students’ well-being, integrative measurements of school-related well-being are important. The EPOCH-G-S is a multidimensional approach to measuring students’ well-being in schools with five factors: Engagement, Perseverance, Optimism, Connectedness, and Happiness. Construct validity and convergent validity of the EPOCH-G-S measure were validated in this study with an Austrian student sample (grade 5 to 12) of N = 1651 students (52.03% males, 47.43% females, 0.55% others, mean age 13.13 years/ SD = 1.89). Validation results are in favor of the EPOCH-G-S as an instrument to assess students’ well-being in school. A second-order model was applied with well-being as a second-order factor and the five specific EPOCH first-order factors. This allows for detecting strengths and weaknesses in students’ well-being profiles and derive needs for intervention. Additional measurement invariance analyses regarding gender and age were conducted.

Gatherings of an Infovore: Open to the World. Really?

OPEN has become an adjective used with a myriad of terms beginning with access and joined by communications, data, source—and open research/science, which is the focus of this column. What was most interesting as I went about my gatherings was the number of articles about “open (fill in the blank)” that were not accessible without a personal or institutional subscription or the willingness of the reader to pay on demand for a download (a.k.a., pay per view, or PPV). As always, only openly accessible references are included here. Further investigation on the reader’s part using search terms such as “open research” and “open science” will uncover many more articles, but most of those will come at a price. So, it begs the question whether research/science is really open now … or will it ever be? Maintaining trust in academic publishing Groth M. KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. Blog. 2020. https://www.kwglobal.com/blog/2020/12/4/maintaining-trust-in-academic-publishing CHORUS now using GetFTR to support open research compliance for publicly funded research Girard S. 2020. https://www.chorusaccess.org/chorus-now-using-getftr-to-support-open-research-compliance/ Generating codebooks to ensure the independent use of research data: some guidelines Horstmann KG, Arslan RC, Greiff S. Eur J Psychol Assess. 2020;36:721–729. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000620. Open access legislation and regulation in the United States: implications for higher education Chaudhary A, Irwin KM, Khoa DH. J Copyright Education Librarianship. 2020;4:1–28. https://doi.org/10.17161/jcel.v4i1.13637 Science journalism, value judgments, and the open science movement Elliott KC. Front Commun. 2019. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2019.00071 Stanford researchers discuss the benefits – and perils – of science without peer review Science moving forward without traditional forms of peer […]

How to evaluate adolescents’ dental anxiety? A review of instruments

How to evaluate adolescents’ dental anxiety? A review of instruments

Improving psychotherapies offered in public hospitals in Nairobi, Kenya: extending practice-based research model for LMICs

BackgroundPsychotherapy and mental health services in Nairobi’s public hospitals are increasing. Rather than prematurely imposing psychotherapy protocols developed in Western countries to Kenya, we argue that first studying psychological interventions as they are practiced may generate understanding of which psychological problems are common, what interventions therapists use, and what seems to be effective in reducing psychiatric problems in a lower and middle income country like Kenya.MethodWe present preliminary findings from a process-outcome study involving 345 patients from two public institutions, Kenyatta National and Mathare National Hospitals. We asked our patients to fill out a brief personal information questionnaire, Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure (Evans et al. in Br J Psychiatry 180:51–60, 2002, and the Session Alliance Inventory (Falkenström et al. in Psychol Assess 27:169–183, 2015) after each session. We present descriptives for CORE-OM, patient-therapist concordance on the SAI, and using longitudinal mixed-effects model, test change in CORE-OM over time with various therapy and patient factors as predictors in regression analyses.ResultsThe majority of patients who attended the outpatient care clinics were young males. Our regression analysis suggested that patients with depression reported higher initial distress levels (2.75 CORE-OM scores, se = 1.11, z = 2.48, p = 0.013, 95% CI 0.57–4.93) than patients with addictions, anxiety, or psychosis. Older clients improved slower (0.08 CORE-OM scores slower improvement per session per year older age; se = 0.03, z = 3.02 p = 0.003, 95% CI 0.03, 0.14). Female patients reported higher initial distress than men (2.62 CORE-OM scores, se = 1.00, z = 2.61, p = 0.009, 95% CI 0.65, 4.58). However, interns had patients who reported significantly higher initial distress (3.24 CORE-OM points, se = 0.90, z = 3.60, p < 0.001, 95% CI 1.48, 5.00), and improved more over time (− 1.20 CORE-OM scores per session, se = 0.51, z = − 2.35, p = 0.019, 95% CI − 2.20, − 0.20) than patients seeing mental health practitioners. The results showed that at average alliance, CORE-OM decreased by 1.74 points per session (se = 0.21, p < 0.001). For each point higher on the SAI at session 2, the CORE-OM decreased by an additional 0.58 points per session (se = 0.25, p = 0.02).DiscussionOur objective was to study psychotherapies as they are practiced in naturalistic settings. The overall significant finding is that our participants report improvement in their functioning mental health condition and distress reduced as psychotherapy progressed. There were many more male than female participants in our sample; younger patients improved more than older ones; and while interns had patients with higher distress, their patients improved better than those patients attended by professionals.ConclusionsThese are preliminary observations to consider for a larger sample follow-up study. Before changing practices, evaluating the existing practices by mapping clinical outcomes is a helpful route.

The Development and Validation of the Thai-Translated Irrational Performance Beliefs Inventory (T-iPBI)

One of the most commonly employed cognitive-behavioural approaches to psychotherapy is rational-emotive behaviour therapy, but researchers have been troubled by some of the limitations of irrational beliefs psychometrics. As a result, Turner et al. (Eur J Psychol Assess 34:174–180, 2018a. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000314 ) developed the Irrational Performance Beliefs Inventory (iPBI), a novel measure of irrational beliefs for use within performance domains. However, the linguistic and cross-cultural adaptation of the iPBI into other languages is necessary for its multinational and multicultural use. The purpose of this paper is to develop the Thai-translated version of the iPBI (T-iPBI) and examine the validity and reliability of the T-iPBI. Data retrieved from 166 participants were analysed using SPSS and AMOS software packages. Thirty-three participants completed two follow-up T-iPBI measurements (1- and 3-week repeat assessment). After the linguistic and cross-cultural adaptation processes, the T-iPBI demonstrated excellent levels of reliability, with internal consistency and test–retest reliability, as well as construct, concurrent, and predictive validity. The current findings indicate that the 20-item T-iPBI can be used as a self-assessment instrument to evaluate individual’s irrational performance beliefs in a Thai population. We also highlight the implications of this study and suggest a variety of future research directions that stem from the results.

Motivating emotional intelligence: A reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) perspective

Trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) is generally associated with positive outcomes and can inform clinical and social interventions. We investigated the sub-factors of trait EI: Wellbeing, Self-control, Emotionality, and Sociability, in the context of the reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) of motivation. In Study 1, participants (N = 247) completed Carver and White’s (J Personal Soc Psychol 67:319–333; Carver, White, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67:319–333, 1994) BIS/BAS scales and a measure of trait EI. All EI sub-factors were positively associated with BAS Drive and negatively with BIS. Study 2 (N = 382) employed a new questionnaire based on revised RST (Corr and Cooper, Psychol Assess 28:1427–1440; Corr, Cooper, Psychological Assessment 28:1427–1440, 2016). All trait EI factors were positively associated with BAS Goal-Drive Persistence and Reward Interest, and negatively with the BIS. Self-control showed negative associations with BAS Impulsivity and was the only factor not to correlate with BAS Reward Reactivity. Results suggest that high trait EI individuals are goal driven, sensitive to reward and lower in avoidance motivation and negative emotion. This motivational basis to trait EI further explicates its structure.

Reaction Times to Appearance-Related or Non-appearance-Related Word Choice Among Women With and Without Eating Psychopathology

Activation of schemas related to one’s appearance has been studied extensively using implicit tasks such as the word stem completion task and the Stoop paradigm. The current study utilized a word stem completion task adapted for presentation on a Personal Data Assistant to examine differences in reaction times to appearance- and non-appearance-related words. Participants were 93 undergraduate women, 30 of whom met criteria for eating psychopathology utilizing the diagnostic algorithm for the Eating Disorder Diagnostic Scale (Stice et al. in Psychol Assess 12:123–131. doi:10.1037/1040-3590.12.2.123, 2000). The remaining 63 participants served as a comparison group. A significant interaction effect indicated that women with eating pathology exhibited significantly longer reaction times when selecting the appearance-related words than those without eating psychopathology. This research introduces a novel method of measuring reaction time to appearance- and non-appearance-related words and demonstrates the relevance of appearance schematicity in the naturalistic environment by showing that these schemas have the potential to impact the way young women process schema-relevant information on a day-to-day basis.

Medical students with low self-efficacy bolstered by calling to medical speciality

This study was performed to understand the degree to which medical students’ self-efficacy (SE) moderates the influence of calling on students’ speciality commitment, emphasizing the need to understand variables that predict primary care specialization. The researchers hypothesized that students who perceived their career as a calling would be more committed to their speciality, especially when students had high SE. Medical students (Years 1–4; N = 152) completed an online survey to rate their calling, speciality commitment, and SE. Calling was measured by the Brief Calling scale (Dik et al., J Career Assess 20:242–263, 2012), while speciality choice was measured by Hollenbeck et al. (J Appl Psychol 74:18–23, 1989) measure of commitment. SE was measured by the Jerusalem and Schwarzer's general SE scale (see Scholz et al., Eur J Psychol Assess 18:242–51, 2002). Calling (r = 0.24, p < 0.01) and SE (r = 0.20, p < 0.05) were found to moderately correlate with speciality commitment, thus emphasizing the possibility that they may have an interaction. The interaction of calling and SE significantly predicted speciality commitment (β = −0.20, t(148) = −2.55, p < 0.05) and explained a significant proportion of variance in speciality commitment (R 2 = 0.12, F(3, 148) = 6.875, p < 0.001). Students with a high presence of calling may have high speciality commitment, despite low SE.

Differential brain structural correlates of insomnia in depression vs. anxiety

Introduction Insomnia is common in many psychiatric disorders (1), especially so in affective disorders like major depressive disorder (MDD) (2) and anxiety disorder (2,3). Insomnia is moreover a cardinal risk factor for the development of MDD (4). Nevertheless, the neural correlates of insomnia complaints in psychiatric patients have hardly been investigated, hampering the development of rational treatment and prevention of these disabling symptoms. materials and methods Fifty-nine patients with MDD as well as 61 patients with anxiety disorder filled out the Women’s Health Initiative Insomnia Rating Scale (WHIIRS) (5) and underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging of the brain. The WHIIRS is a brief, five-item scale evaluating insomnia symptoms, which yields a summary score that reflects complaints on sleep quality. Whole-brain voxel-based morphometry was used to investigate the association of the WHIIRS summary score with gray matter density. Results In patients with MDD, the WHIIRS insomnia severity score showed a strong negative correlation with gray matter density in the pulvinar of the thalamus. Gray matter in this area showed no association at all with insomnia severity in patients with anxiety disorder. In contrast, anxiety disorder patients more severe insomnia showed lower frontopolar GM density, an association not found in MDD patients. Conclusion This is the first study to directly compare structural brain correlates of insomnia severity between MDD and anxiety disorder. Unlike previous voxel-based morphometry findings that indicated particularly orbitofrontal involvement in sleep complaints in both well-sleeping (6) and poorly-sleeping (7) people without psychiatric disorder, we here found differential involvement of the pulvinar and frontopolar cortex. These triple dissociations have strong implications for our understanding of insomnia; depending on the psychiatric phenotype, remarkably different cerebral mechanisms can underlie seemingly similar subjective sleep complaints.

Gender and Psychological Correlates of Self-rated Strengths Among Youth

Research on virtues and character strengths has increased over the last decade. A total of 283 young participants from Portugal completed a measure of character strengths (Furnham and Lester in Eur J Psychol Assess 28:95–101, 2012) grounded on the values in action inventory of strengths (Peterson and Seligman in Character strengths and virtues: a handbook of classification, APA Press, Washington, DC, 2004). Participants also completed well-being measures, and a Big Five personality trait measure. The study examined the factor structure of self-assessed character strengths as well as demographic (particularly gender), well-being and personality correlates of the virtues which are the “higher order” classification of the strengths. Our results provided evidence for a four-dimensional model, though somewhat different from the theoretical formulation. Females typically scored higher on character strengths than males. Regressions investigating demographic, well-being and personality determinants of these strengths evidenced personality factors (particularly openness and agreeableness) were always most powerful predictors of the self-reported strengths than demographic and well-being measures. Limitations of the research are discussed and directions for future investigation are suggested.

AB0640 Pain catastrophizing and pain anxiety are associated with pain severity and with both neuropathic and fibromyalga pain phenotypes in PSS patients

BackgroundAnxiety and depression are frequently associated with Sjogren’s syndrome and pain is a common complaint. Patients who experience these problems find their symptoms frightening and possibly more disabling than the...

Changes in Beliefs about the Social Competence of Self and Others Following Group Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment

The current study examined changes in social anxiety thoughts and beliefs following cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT). Participants (N = 77) were adults with a principal diagnosis of SAD who received 12, 2-h sessions of group CBT at a hospital-based outpatient anxiety disorders clinic. There were significant decreases from pretreatment to posttreatment in social anxiety symptoms and in symptoms of depression, nonspecific anxiety and tension, as well as significant improvements in social anxiety beliefs, as assessed via the Social Thoughts and Beliefs Scale (STABS; Turner et al., Psychol Assess 15:384–391, 2003). Change in social anxiety beliefs made a significant contribution to the prediction of social anxiety symptoms at posttreatment over and above pretreatment social anxiety symptoms and changes in depression, nonspecific anxiety and tension. A positive change in the belief that others are more socially-competent emerged as a significant unique predictor of social anxiety symptoms at posttreatment. The findings demonstrate that the STABS is sensitive to cognitive-behavioral treatment. The findings also suggest that social comparison processes in particular are a key aspect of improvement in social anxiety symptoms. This is an important direction for future research.

Validating the Portuguese Version of the Satisfaction With Life Scale in an Elderly Sample

Life satisfaction is referred to a cognitive, judgmental process (Diener et al. in J Pers Assess 49:71–75, 1985), in which person’s quality of life is globally assessed according to his/her chosen criteria (Shin and Johnson in Soc Indic res 5:475–492, 1978). Thus, life satisfaction is a conscious cognitive judgment, based on the comparison of one’s life with a self-imposed standard or set of standards, which lead to a global assessment of life (Pavot and Diener in Psychol Assess 5:164–172, 1993). Among the many scales developed to measure life satisfaction, the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS, Diener et al. in J Pers Assess 49:71–75, 1985) is one of the global life satisfaction scales more often used in the research arena. It is composed of five items assessing global life satisfaction, using a Likert type response format. The aim of this paper is to validate the Portuguese version of the SWLS via confirmatory factor analysis, with a sample of 1,003 elderly from Angola. Reliability, factorial and criterial validity estimates are presented. Overall, the results shown that the scale had an adequate one-factor confirmatory solution, satisfying reliability indices, and adequate criterion-related validity when assessed in a sample of Angolan elderly. The discussion relates the results with existing literature and posits the contributions of the paper: firstly, it offers the researchers on life satisfaction in Portuguese-speaking contexts a brief, self-rated measure of satisfaction with life that has sound psychometric properties, validity, and reliability; secondly, it is the first confirmatory validation of the scale in Portuguese.

Testing the dimensionality of posttraumatic stress responses in young Chinese adult earthquake survivors: further evidence for “dysphoric arousal” as a unique PTSD construct

This study investigated an alternative five-factor diagnostic model for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, and tested external convergent and discriminant validity of the model in a young Chinese sample of earthquake survivors. A total of 938 participants (456 women, 482 men) aged 15-20 years were recruited from a vocational school originally located in Beichuan County Town which was almost completely destroyed by the "Wenchuan Earthquake." The participants were administrated with the PTSD Checklist and the Hopkins Symptoms Checklist-25 12 months after the earthquake. The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the five-factor intercorrelated model (intrusion, avoidance, numbing, dysphoric arousal, and anxious arousal) fit the data significantly better than the four-factor numbing model proposed by King et al. (1998: Psychol Assess 10:90-96) and the four-factor dysphoria model proposed by Simms et al. (2002: J Abnorm Psychol 111:637-647). Further analyses indicated that four out of five PTSD factors yielded significantly different correlations with external measures of anxiety versus depression. The findings provide further empirical evidence in favor of the five-factor diagnostic model of PTSD, and carry implications for the upcoming DSM-5.

Is Insomnia Associated with Mortality?

Is Insomnia Associated with Mortality?

The Short Health Anxiety Inventory and Multidimensional Inventory of Hypochondriacal Traits: A Comparison of Two Self-Report Measures of Health Anxiety

Using data from a large nonclinical sample (N = 503), the current study examined the convergence and utility of the Short Health Anxiety Inventory (SHAI; Salkovskis et al., in Psychol Med 32:843–853, 2002) and the Multidimensional Inventory of Hypochondriacal Traits (MIHT; Longley et al., in Psychol Assess 17: 3–14, 2005). Results from a higher-order measurement model indicated that the SHAI and the MIHT factors were distinguishable and generally shared significant intercorrelations. The affective factor of the SHAI and the MIHT shared the strongest convergence and the MIHT cognitive factor clustered with both affective factors. Further, a higher-order health anxiety factor adequately accounted for SHAI-MIHT factor intercorrelations, with the affective and cognitive factors of the SHAI and the MIHT loading strongest upon the higher-order factor. Finally, only the affective and cognitive SHAI and MIHT scales incrementally contributed—beyond general distress and the other SHAI and MIHT scales—in regression analyses predicting medical utilization and somatic symptoms. Implications for the conceptualization and assessment of health anxiety are discussed.

The Factor Structure of the Kessler-10 Questionnaire in a Treatment-Seeking Sample

The Kessler-10 (K10) questionnaire was developed as a screening instrument for nonspecific psychological distress. Although it was validated using epidemiological samples, it is increasingly being used in clinical settings. We sought to determine whether the factor structure of the K10 as established in epidemiological samples, could be replicated in a sample of treatment seeking adults. We used confirmatory factor analysis to investigate two established models of the factor structure of the K10 in a sample of clinic attendees. Neither the single factor model of Kessler et al., Psychol Med. 2002;32:959-976, nor the multifactorial model of Brooks et al., Psychol Assess. 2006;18:62-70 fitted the data. Respecification of the Kessler et al. model to reduce item redundancy did not result in adequate fit. These findings call into question the construct validity of the K10 in treatment seeking samples, and the suitability of the scale for clinical settings may need to be reconsidered.

Reversal Learning as a Neuropsychological Indicator for the Neuropathology of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? A Behavioral Study

Reversal Learning as a Neuropsychological Indicator for the Neuropathology of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? A Behavioral Study